This section introduces aspects that may help facilitate a better understanding of the disclosure. Accordingly, these statements are to be read in this light and are not to be understood as admissions about what is or is not prior art.
One of the most common and attractive practices of drug delivery is by oral route. However, overcoming the gastrointestinal epithelial barrier is the major challenge for efficient delivery of drugs, especially for those of peptides, proteins or other therapeutics of biological origins. There are unmet needs in providing patient-friendly, high-compliant, oral dosing therapeutics of biological origins. We have discovered that the para cellular route may be exploited to provide a solution to those unmet needs by using a bacterial-origin peptide for enhanced delivery of drugs through the epithelial barrier to reach the underlying lamina propria and submucosal compartment.
In some illustrative embodiments, the present invention generally relates to a method for enhanced delivery of a drug across epithelial barriers using a peptide derived from Listeria adhesion protein (LAP). In particular, the present invention discloses a non-invasive drug delivery method using Listeria adhesion protein (LAP), an analogue of 90% or higher identity, or a fragment of ten or more continuous amino acid residues thereof.
In some other embodiments, this present invention relates to a method for enhanced delivery of a drug across epithelial barriers by incorporation of those polypeptides disclosed herein, either as a physical mixture of a pharmaceutical formulation or as a covalent construction at molecular level to the drug molecule to be delivered by a selective chemical modification or by a recombinant technology.